Rebuilding burns training in mixed reality
Project Ember, a clinician-led programme from Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, places realistic digital burns onto a physical mannequin. The goal is a generation of surgeons trained on the full range of patients they will actually meet — and it has now earned a 2026 Unity for Humanity award and grant.
2026 Unity for Humanity award winner
Why this matters
The challenge
Simulation with mannequins is the gold standard in burns training, and Stoke Mandeville Hospital runs a nationally recognised simulation course built on it. The equipment is the constraint. A single mannequin costs in the region of £120,000, and the prosthetic burns overlaid onto it are hand-painted by specialists and wear out with use.
Most mannequins also present a single skin tone and a single age. Trainees therefore see a narrow slice of the patients and injuries they will go on to treat, and access to the course itself is limited by cost and geography. Meanwhile, most burn deaths occur in countries where this kind of training capacity barely exists at all.
A digital burn on a physical patient
Through a mixed reality headset or a handheld screen, Project Ember renders a realistic digital burn directly onto a standard mannequin. The injury stays locked in place as the trainee moves around and examines it, so the assessment feels like a clinical encounter rather than a screen exercise.
Every scenario is adjustable. Instructors set the depth, size, cause and location of the burn, together with the age and characteristics of the patient. One mannequin can now present a different clinical challenge in every single session.
Built for every patient
The platform includes a dynamic skin tone engine, so each burn can be visualised across the full spectrum of skin tones. Burn injuries present differently on different skin, and training materials have historically covered a narrow band of presentations. Widening that exposure before clinicians meet real patients supports more accurate assessment and more equitable care.
Three steps to a new patient
Define the patient
Set the age, skin tone and characteristics of the patient to build the clinical context for the scenario.
Specify the burn
Choose the depth, size, cause and location of the injury. The digital burn renders on the mannequin in real time.
Train with your patient
Assess the patient in mixed reality. Trainers can follow the assessment live and give feedback as it happens.
Built in partnership
Project Ember is what structured collaboration between the NHS and its design and technology partners looks like in practice.
Unity
Project Ember is a 2026 Unity for Humanity award and grant winner. The platform is built on Unity's real-time 3D engine, and the grant will fund the next phase of development, a broader scenario library and formal validation of the training experience.
Read the announcementTeam Consulting
Team Consulting partnered with our clinicians on the proof of concept, producing a working mixed reality demonstrator in two days, built in Unity and tested on a Magic Leap 2 headset. That early de-risking is why the project could move quickly and cheaply to this stage.
Read their case studySOBS Burn Simulation Course
The clinical spine of the platform is the nationally recognised burn simulation course hosted at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. Project Ember digitises that expertise so it can travel far beyond a single simulation suite.
Ask about the courseFrom the team
Project Ember is led by Mr Ryan Kerstein (Consultant Plastic Surgeon), Dr Stefan Hudson (Clinical Innovation Fellow) and Mr Sipan Shahnazari (Plastic Surgery Resident and Clinical Innovation Fellow), supported by the BHT Research and Innovation team.
Burns training has been rationed by the cost of the kit for decades. Project Ember removes that ceiling. Any hospital with a mannequin and a headset can now train its clinicians on patients of every age and every skin tone.— Mr Ryan Kerstein, Consultant Plastic Surgeon and Associate Medical Director for Research and Innovation, BHT
From Stoke Mandeville to the global stage
The next milestone is a minimum viable product containing a single, fully realised burn scenario, which will be formally assessed for face and content validity. A validated platform then opens the path to wider development and international distribution, with a particular focus on the countries where the burden of burn injury is highest.
Support from the Unity for Humanity grant accelerates every part of that plan.
Want to explore immersive technology with BRAInLAB?
We work with clinicians and with partners across industry and academia to take healthcare problems from idea to working solution. If Project Ember has sparked an idea, we would like to hear about it.
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